This work is an introductory treatment of issues and options in social and bioethics which center on the end of life. Moreland and Geisler have attempted to simplify and summarize various end-of-life topics without being simplistic or caricaturing different viewpoints, even though the authors’ own viewpoints are made perfectly clear. A comprehensive bibliography, glossary, and subject and author index make this a valuable textbook as well as a resource for further study. The major purpose of this book is to make the reader think more clearly and deeply about the important issues discussed between its covers. Beginning the work is an essay that introduces the dilemma of ethical decisions. The following chapters separately discuss the situations of abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, suicide, capital punishment, and war. The discussion concludes with a chapter of practical and theoretical guidance for making ethical decisions. A glossary, subject index, author index, and selected bibliography for each chapter make this a valuable text. This important work will not only appeal to experienced philosophers, but also to students of moral philosophy, theology, and ethics. ~ Synopsis
What kinds of things are redness, hairiness, and humanness. We take such things for granted. And yet, there is great controversy about the ontological nature of such properties. There are three basic approaches: “Extreme Nominalism (properties do not exist), Nominalism (properties exist and are themselves particulars), and Realism (properties exist and are universals).” Moreland argues for the superior explanatory power of Realism in accounting for these realities. While this argument may seem academic, there is a lot at stake for the Naturalistic world view in at least one respect. If, in fact, non-physical properties exist, then the universe is not comprised solely of matter and energy. The door creaks open for other kinds of non-physical entities like numbers, consciousness, and perhaps even God. ~ Afterall
A remarkably clear, straightforward, and brief (211-page) discussion, from a Univ. of Alabama philosophy professor, of the implications of Darwinism for animal rights. Most of Rachels’ book is a review of
Darwin’s work and of the responses and relevant ideas of biologists, philosophers, and others – both Darwin’s contemporaries who rejected his theories for their assault on religion and human dignity, and other thinkers who have argued that humanity’s creation in the image of God or, later, human speech, intellect, and/or moral sense make human specialness compatible with evolution. Rachels then puts forth his own argument for "moral individualism," based on his belief that evolution precludes the concept of human specialness and forces a reconsideration of our treatment of animals. In the end, he restores a sort of relativist respect for human claims in his distinction between "biological" and "biographical" life, but this same distinction supports his assertion that a rhesus monkey might have a higher claim to consideration than a severely brain-damaged human. But such a summary ignores the specific topics of debate, as well as the arguments of philosophers from Kant to sociobiologists and animal-rights advocates, that Rachels characterizes so neatly and accessibly – and that, along with his own provocative argument, should earn the book serious attention. ~ Kirkus Reviews
It is important for Christians to understand how their religion is viewed by others and where the greatest friction exists between Christianity and the faiths accepted by billions of our fellow humans. I found it best, as a Christian, to take this material in small bites. Due to its very nature, the majority of the contents of this book are in direct opposition to the Christian faith. A believer should not be too unsettled by reasoned assaults on what they purport to have absolute faith in. That said, it is naturally unnerving to be confronted with worldviews that are directly opposed to aspects of the thing a person has the most faith in. In order to get the most use out of a work like this, and it has much use for Christians, is to read one or two of the pieces at a time and mull them over with an understanding and objective mindset. Remaining somewhat objective and keeping ones passions at bay will allow there to be a great deal of value taken from this book. The best way to find out what you believe, how much you really believe it, and why you believe what you do is to allow your beliefs to be honestly and rationally challenged. This book also shows areas in which much of the friction between religions and cultures is based on miscommunication and misunderstanding. The various world religions should respect each other’s differentness, but it is better for all parties is everyone is well informed. This book will definitely help any Christian be more informed about the religious views of others and to better form his/her understandings of his/her own faith. ~ jwoodward at Amazon.com
Before F. W. de Klerk was chosen to succeed P. W. Botha as President, he was asked if he would be the Mikhail S. Gorbachev of South Africa, a loyal party man who overturns much that the party once held inviolable. Mr. de Klerk had a quick reply: “The only thing Gorbachev and I have in common is this!” he said, slapping the top of his head.
Three years later, there is more than baldness to support comparisons between the two leaders. Like President Gorbachev, President de Klerk has freed men previously vilified as traitors, declared past policies bankrupt and begun a process of change that has outraged party conservatives.
Also like Mr. Gorbachev, who has shown some of the old Kremlin reflexes in his recent actions in Lithuania, Mr de Klerk has perplexed supporters and opponents alike, who wonder where he will call a halt to the scrapping of old policies. While the South African leader has said he believes in an “equal vote” for blacks and whites and a system that eliminates racial discrimination, he has been purposefully vague about the details of the “new South Africa” that the Government has said it wants in place within five years.
Pragmatic Cast of Mind
Mr. de Klerk’s broad formula acknowledges that he considers apartheid a dead-end street and that majority rule in some form is inevitable, But Mr. de Klerk has left no doubt, either, that he will strive to protect what the five million whites here have built up in the 350 years since the first settlers arrived, including their property rights and their right to control their own residential communities and schools.
While Nelson Mandela and other black leaders have said that Mr. de Klerk’s vision appears to encompass limitations on black political authority that they could not accept, many South Africans who favor far-reaching political change say they believe that the real hope for the future may lie not in Mr. de Klerk’s current pronouncements but in his probing, pragmatic cast of mind and an instinct to reach out for new solutions.
‘He realized that you get nowhere if you don’t have a following.’
Mr. de Klerk’s associates say those traits are allied to a profound religious commitment to ideals of justice that sets him apart from his predecessors.
The leaders of the National Party before Mr. de Klerk belonged to the main wing of the Dutch Reformed Church, a Calvinist body that lent such powerful theological backing to apartheid that it became known as “The National Party at Prayer.” Mr. de Klerk is a member of the small Dopper church, a 19th-century breakaway that insisted on the separation of church and state, and, partly for that reason, avoided sanctoning the official racial doctrines.
‘Dialogue Is God’s Style’
While Mr. de Klerk makes little public show of his faith, his thinking on political matters has apparently been powerfully influenced by Dopper teachings, especially those taken from the New Testament. Meeting with Afrikaner church ministers in January, Mr. de Klerk traced his hopes for negotiations with black leaders to Dopper tenets about the need for believers to seek justice and reconciliation. According to the Rev. Pieter W. Bingle, Mr. de Klerk’s Cape Town minister, the President put it simply. “Dialogue is God’s style,” he said.
That belief in breaching differences through discussion appears to have converged with a politician’s caution to persuade Mr. de Klerk that, for now at least, it is better not to draw blueprints of the new political system he will attempt to negotiate.
Officials close to Mr. de Klerk say the President will be flexible about matters that the National Party seemed set on as recently as September, when it won a bitterly contested election.
Among those matters, the officials said, is whether a new constitution should provide for separate, racially defined voters’ rolls resulting in a Parliament composed of racial blocs, as the National Party suggested in its September campaign, or whether the protection for whites that Mr. de Klerk has demanded can be achieved in other ways.
Under pressure from the right-wing Conservative Party in Parliament earlier this month, Gerrit van N. Viljoen, Minister for Constitutional Affairs, said the Government would hold out for separate voters’ rolls.
But at other times Mr. Viljoen has sounded as though the Government might accept Mr. Mandela’s demand for a single voters’ roll that is blind to race in return for other mechanisms like voting procedures that would give white members of Parliament, perhaps in conjunction with members from other minority groups, an effective veto on issues like property and education rights.
A few years ago, not many in the National Party would have bet on Mr. de Klerk leading the party to change. As a member of President P. W. Botha’s Cabinet for 11 years, and of B. J. Vorster’s Administration before that, he sometimes sided with racial hard-liners.
Afrikaans-language newspapers recently identified Mr. de Klerk as one of two Cabinet ministers who went to President Botha in 1986 and demanded that the Foreign Minister, Roelof F. Botha, be ordered to recant a prediction that South Africa might one day have a black president. The Foreign Minister complied.
De Klerk’s Political Shifts
But the story is recounted these days to show that Mr. de Klerk, then leader of the National Party in Transvaal Province, was a canny politician, aware that to have any chance of leading South Africa away from apartheid he would first have to consolidate his position with the powerful conservative wing of the National Party.
“He realized that you get nowhere if you don’t have a following, that you have to be able to take the people with you,” said Ebbe Dommisse, editor of Die Burger, a Cape Town newspaper with close links to the Government.
More recently, the setbacks for Communism in Eastern Europe is said to have a profound effect on Mr. de Klerk’s thinking. The President acknowledged as much in his speech to Parliament on Feb. 2, when he announced the legalization of the African National Congress and the South African Communist Party, among other anti-apartheid groups.
He implied that the decline of Stalinist Communism in Eastern Europe had encouraged the Government to move toward negotiations with groups like the African National Congress that have relied strongly for financial support and military training on the Soviet Union and its Eastern European allies.
‘Dialogue is God’s style,’ the South African leader has said.
But according to a senior Cabinet minister, there was another lesson Mr. de Klerk took from Eastern Europe, that battalions of soldiers and police officers cannot sustain an unpopular political system indefinitely.
Facing the Hard-Liners
The lesson was one Mr. de Klerk took to a meeting in December with the country’s top 500 police commanders, many of whom were skeptical of moves to dismantle apartheid. Mr. de Klerk offered a grim picture of the alternative to a settlement with blacks. “Even if the blood flows ankle deep in our streets and four or five million people have been shot dead,” he said, “the problem will be just as great as before we began shooting.”
Roelof P. Meyer, the Deputy Minister for Constitutional Affairs, said that that realization fortified Mr. de Klerk in the face of the wrath of racial hardliners.
“The President has come to the conclusion that we have to do something about our situation, that we cannot go on with conflict indefinitely,” Mr. Meyer said. “This means that we have to go for political reconciliation, and that we cannot wait for the support of all whites, because if we do, we will have to wait years, indefinitely even, and in the meantime we will lose the country.”
If you look up ‘atheism’ in a dictionary, you will probably find it defined as the belief that there is no God. Certainly many people understand atheism in this way. Yet many atheists do not, and this is not what the term means if one consider it from the point of view of its Greek roots. In Greek ‘a’ means ‘without’ or ‘not’ and ‘theos’ means ‘god.’ From this standpoint an atheist would simply be someone without a belief in God, not necessarily someone who believes that God does not exist. According to its Greek roots, then, atheism is a negative view, characterized by the absence of belief in God.
Religious experiences are like those induced by drugs, alcohol, mental illness, and sleep deprivation: They tell no uniform or coherent story, and there is no plausible theory to account for discrepancies among them.
Since experiences of God are good grounds for the existence of God, are not experiences of the absence of God good grounds for the nonexistence of God? After all, many people have tried to experience God and have failed. Cannot these experiences of the absence of God be used by atheists to counter the theistic argument based on experience of the presence of God?
Then I learned that all moral judgments are “value judgments,” that all value judgments are subjective, and that none can be proved to be either “right” or “wrong.” I even read somewhere that the Chief justice of the United States had written that the American Constitution expressed nothing more than collective value judgments. Believe it or not, I figured out for myself what apparently the Chief Justice couldn’t figure out for himself: that if the rationality of one value judgment was zero, multiplying it by millions would not make it one whit more rational. Nor is there any “reason” to obey the law for anyone, like myself, who has the boldness and daring — the strength of character — to throw off its shackles. I discovered that to become truly free, truly unfettered, I had to become truly uninhibited. And I quickly discovered that the greatest obstacle to my freedom, the greatest block and limitation to it, consists in the insupportable “value judgment” that I was bound to respect the rights of others. I asked myself, who were these “others”? Other human beings, with human rights? Why is it more wrong to kill a human animal than any other animal, a pig or a sheep or a steer? Is your life more to you than a hog’s life to a hog? Why should I be willing to sacrifice my pleasure more for the one than for the other? Surely, you would not, in this age of scientific enlightenment, declare that God or nature has marked some pleasures as “moral” or “good” and others as “immoral” or “bad”? In any case, let me assure you, my dear young lady, that there is absolutely no comparison between the pleasure I might take in eating ham and the pleasure I anticipate in raping and murdering you. That is the honest conclusion to which my education has led me after the most conscientious examination of my spontaneous and uninhibited self.
How does the gospel relate to a pluralist society? What is the Christian message in a society marked by religious pluralism, ethnic diversity, and cultural relativism? Should Christians encountering today’s pluralist society concentrate on evangelism or on dialogue? How does the prevailing climate of opinion affect, perhaps infect, Christians’ faith? These kinds of questions are addressed in this noteworthy book by Lesslie Newbigin. A highly respected Christian leader and ecumenical figure, Newbigin provides a brilliant analysis of contemporary (secular, humanist, pluralist) culture and suggests how Christians can more confidently affirm their faith in such a context. While drawing from scholars such as Michael Polanyi, Alasdair MacIntyre, Hendrikus Berkhof, Walter Wink, and Robert Wuthnow, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society is suited not only to an academic readership. This heartfelt work by a missionary pastor and preacher also offers to Christian leaders and laypeople some thoughtful, helpful, and provocative reflections.
